Cars

[Pointedstick]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... with-cars/

For decades, Americans have been in love with the automobile — or so the saying goes. This single idea has been a central premise of transportation policy, pop culture and national history for the last half-century. It animates how we think about designing the world around us, and how we talk about dissidents in our midst who dislike cars.

“This ‘love affair’ thesis is like the ultimate story,” says Peter Norton, a historian at the University of Virginia, who warns that we need to revisit how we came to believe this line before we embrace its logical conclusion in a future full of driverless cars. “It’s one of the biggest public relations coups of all time. It’s always treated as folk wisdom, as an organic growth from society. One of the signs of its success is that everyone forgets it was invented as a public relations campaign.”
[...]
“The most important thing [the show] said is that you can’t criticize love with logic, “ Norton says. “Love is blind, love will find a way, love will do whatever it takes.”

In the half century since then, we have largely rebuilt American communities to accommodate this love, retrofitting cities to make space for cars, bulldozing old buildings so that we can park them, constructing new communities where it’s not possible to get around without them.

“When that’s criticized, the reply typically is ‘well look, it’s a free country, people voted with their pocketbooks to buy cars, they like the suburbs,” Norton says. “I think that’s a reasonable position to take. I’m troubled at how seldom people have stopped to question it, though. It is a story with a history.”

http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/18/72 ... ians-roads
[img width=400]https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sslCtm ... 3206.0.jpg[/img]




Life without cars 2014

[Ad Orientem]

I don't have a knee jerk hostility to cars. They have their place and beyond convenience are a practical necessity for people who live in rural areas. But by far the best cities I have been in, have been built up, as opposed to out, and have had excellent public transportation.

[Pointedstick]

A post on the idiocy of traffic studies by… a traffic engineer!

http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2015/09 ... udies.html


The basic problem is that cars are a nuisance for everyone but the driver. They are large, so they take up valuable space. They are fast and heavy, making them dangerous to other people, cars, and buildings. They are noisy, smell bad, and pollute the environment. The natural result of having cars around is that people don't want to be around other people's cars. So naturally development comes to be dominated by setbacks and buffers, but in the process, things become so spread out that you actually need cars to get around more than you did before! So then more parking is needed to hold people's cars as they get around, further pushing things apart. In this way, the naturally-occurring remedy actually exacerbates the problem it was trying to solve. This process has no logical end, inevitably leading to development farther and farther away from anything useful, with larger and faster roadways to accommodate all the vehicle traffic, bigger parking lots to hold all the cars, and deeper buffer zones to separate the roaring traffic from buildings and people. In the process, land values are suppressed, because property near huge roadways, far away from anything desirable is low-value property.

The result is total automobile dependence, hellish commutes, underemployment, poverty, a poor local tax base, a ballooning budget spent on road construction and maintenance, constantly-rising property taxes, and rising crime as the large parts of the land become deserted amidst the poverty and underemployment. The place becomes poor, dangerous, and ugly, and people fantasize about escaping, often to the countryside--a quintessentially American fantasy where they nonetheless need a car to reach anything, but the density is so low that they are not bothered by other people and their cars. Of course this fantasy still involves total car dependence, long commutes, and all the expenses associated with vehicle and large property ownership, and causes even worse social isolation (exacerbated by the fact that many of the people attracted to this lifestyle are gruff and antisocial), but at least it's not so ugly and dangerous, and property taxes are low.

Sprawl and back-to-the-land fantasies are just the natural result of cars. They cannot be fought without acknowledging the root of the problem: cars.

[jafs]

Why do you continue to ignore that many people may not want to live in a very dense urban environment, even if there are no cars?

I wouldn't want to live there - just the concentration of people/buildings/etc. isn't attractive to me anymore.

[Pointedstick]

Why do you continue to ignore that many people may not want to live in a very dense urban environment, even if there are no cars?

I wouldn't want to live there - just the concentration of people/buildings/etc. isn't attractive to me anymore.

Who's ignoring it? What's being ignored is actually the inverse: the people who would want to live there. Right now those people in the United States have few options outside of New York City and parts of Philly and Boston, which still have car-centric surface transportation systems that make them an unpleasant place to live and raise children and caused the phenomenon of fleeing for suburbs as soon as cars were available.

Have you ever lived for any period of time in a major European city that was predominately built before motor vehicles? For example, Lisbon. I have. It's quite wonderful, and the "density" is nothing like what we Americans think of as density. It's actually a very quiet, serene place, despite an on-paper density figure that is quite high by American standards (16,726/sq mi, 16 times more dense then where I live right now). And Lisbon is not even a particularly great pedestrian city, nothing like Paris or Jerusalem or Brussels (which is amazing for people). Our perception of density is mostly caused by vehicles, not people or buildings. I can walk to a pizza parlor and a grocery store from my house in 10 minutes but I have to cross an 8-lane state highway to do it, which is unpleasant for me, and my wife doesn't want to do it, ever. She drives instead, despite the fact that it's walkable. In no way is my city dense with people. But it's dense with cars and surface vehicle streets.

This is why people who profess to hate density have a great time vacationing in places that have higher density figures and lower car usage then where they live. The American phenomenon of people fleeing the city for suburbs barely happens in Europe, because they have properly-designed cities for the most part that don't feel oppressive and dangerous.

Besides, it's eminently possible to have neighborhoods that don't seem dense building-wise (e.g. with lots of single-family residential houses) but are nonetheless not car-dependent because there's a good subway system and small local shops are permitted.

[jafs]

I wouldn't want to live in Lisbon, nor vacation there.

If anything, when on vacation, we traveled to mostly less dense, smaller places.

Your idea of fewer cars is a good one - I just don't think it creates the utopia you envision, especially since you mainly seem focused on dense urban cities.

Do you have an example of a less dense city/town with good public transportation where you don't need a car?

[Pointedstick]

I wouldn't want to live in Lisbon, nor vacation there.

If anything, when on vacation, we traveled to mostly less dense, smaller places.

Your idea of fewer cars is a good one - I just don't think it creates the utopia you envision, especially since you mainly seem focused on dense urban cities.

Do you have an example of a less dense city/town with good public transportation where you don't need a car?

I've been told by my colleagues in Tokyo that many single-family house residential areas would qualify.  Many people who live in those houses so own cars, in fact, but don't have to use them every day to get around, because the streets are designed for people, not cars. But no such thing exists in the USA because the surface transportation infrastructure is for cars, not people. If you can't walk to and from the subway or train stations, they become unused. So there's no point in adding those additional systems when you already have an expensive vehicle road network.

But there are many real, actual examples of very dense cities there you don't need a car but the place doesn't feel like a cramped shithole (I know the feeling; truly I do). Some that I am personally familiar with are Lisbon, Paris, Jerusalem, and Brussels. I have colleagues in Tokyo who love it for similar reasons (none of them own cars there). Even the NYC metro area counts. I successfully lived there for four years with no car and used the subway and train systems extensively, even though I found it unpleasant for other reasons. I know that you grew up in NYC so I think we're both on the same page about why one might want to leave that environment. It drove me to the suburbs.

I don't mean that getting rid of cars creates some kind of paradise. Charles Dickens made a career out of describing dense cities (particularly American ones) as hell on earth 60+ years before automobiles were invented. Non-car-dependent cities can still be terrible places to live if they are polluted; if there is no shared culture among the residents; if there is no civic pride that beautifies the place and keeps it from becoming a dirty slum; if a criminally-inclined underclass lives there; if there are no parks within easy walking distance; if harsh zoning separates schools and small shops from residential neighborhoods; if tall buildings are out of proportion to narrow streets; if building facades are blank and ugly at street level; etc. Being car-free is no panacea. But it sure helps!

[Tyler]

Everybody has different tastes. 

I love walkable neighborhoods, and particularly liked many of the cities on the SF Peninsula that combined beautiful single family homes with multiple walkable city centers.  But I moved away because those same cities were completely elitist and actively fought all new development, intentionally driving up prices to make it cost prohibitive.  It's a common theme in the car-free utopias -- make it insanely expensive to live there, then look down your nose at people who do not participate.  Cities like this are just another form of conspicuous consumption no different than the SUVs they demonize.

I'm all for building small walkable city centers in as many locations as possible.  I'm totally against trying to force everyone into pre-existing high-density cities. 

[Pointedstick]

I couldn't agree more, Tyler. I think it's such a shame that the people who gravitate to these existing areas tend to be elitist NIMBYist liberal assholes who turn off everyone else from their preferred style of urban design. It pushes the conservative wing of the USA to embrace suburbia, even those who don't really like it all that much.

[MachineGhost]

Finally, a fresh explanation for why Human Zoos have such "appeal":

[quote=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/magaz ... est-t.html]After two years of analysis, West and Bettencourt discovered that all of these urban variables could be described by a few exquisitely simple equations. For example, if they know the population of a metropolitan area in a given country, they can estimate, with approximately 85 percent accuracy, its average income and the dimensions of its sewer system. These are the laws, they say, that automatically emerge whenever people “agglomerate,” cramming themselves into apartment buildings and subway cars. It doesn’t matter if the place is Manhattan or Manhattan, Kan.: the urban patterns remain the same. West isn’t shy about describing the magnitude of this accomplishment. “What we found are the constants that describe every city,” he says. “I can take these laws and make precise predictions about the number of violent crimes and the surface area of roads in a city in Japan with 200,000 people. I don’t know anything about this city or even where it is or its history, but I can tell you all about it. And the reason I can do that is because every city is really the same.” After a pause, as if reflecting on his hyperbole, West adds: “Look, we all know that every city is unique. That’s all we talk about when we talk about cities, those things that make New York different from L.A., or Tokyo different from Albuquerque. But focusing on those differences misses the point. Sure, there are differences, but different from what? We’ve found the what.”

There is something deeply strange about thinking of the metropolis in such abstract terms. We usually describe cities, after all, as local entities defined by geography and history. New Orleans isn’t a generic place of 336,644 people. It’s the bayou and Katrina and Cajun cuisine. New York isn’t just another city. It’s a former Dutch fur-trading settlement, the center of the finance industry and home to the Yankees. And yet, West insists, those facts are mere details, interesting anecdotes that don’t explain very much. The only way to really understand the city, West says, is to understand its deep structure, its defining patterns, which will show us whether a metropolis will flourish or fall apart. We can’t make our cities work better until we know how they work. And, West says, he knows how they work.[/quote]

[MachineGhost]

Sprawl and back-to-the-land fantasies are just the natural result of cars. They cannot be fought without acknowledging the root of the problem: cars.

Yes, that certainly is the annoying dichotomy about it.  My fear is that self-driving cars are actually going to allow people to do the back-to-the-land fantasy and then it will no longer be a dream.  So the window is closing shut unless the Human Zoo mantains its vise-like grip and appeal.

[MachineGhost]

I wouldn't want to live there - just the concentration of people/buildings/etc. isn't attractive to me anymore.

Let's elucidate why.  I'm anti-social and don't think the vast majority of people's opinions are worth listening to, nevermind wasting time with banal trite triviliaties for sake of social etiquette.  What's yours?

The great thing about this here PP forum is it self-selects by default.  If you can't hold your mustard, you don't wind up participating.  Win-win.

[jafs]

I find that much human energy in a small space overwhelming at this point.

Also, a lot of big cities just don't work that well - stuff is overloaded and breaks down a lot - and I like things that work well.  Good water pressure, trash/sewer systems, etc.

Although, I will say that a big city in Canada didn't have quite the same stress level - I suspect part of it is that Americans live with a lot of stress/tension.

The things I love about bigger cities are the fantastic variety/quality of food, art/culture/music, and the sophistication of the average person you meet.

[MachineGhost]

I can walk to a pizza parlor and a grocery store from my house in 10 minutes but I have to cross an 8-lane state highway to do it, which is unpleasant for me, and my wife doesn't want to do it, ever. She drives instead, despite the fact that it's walkable. In no way is my city dense with people. But it's dense with cars and surface vehicle streets.

That's the sound of all the hot air deflating out of the ballon.  Where you live doesn't really sound so remote if you've got an 8-lane highway nearby.  I'm turned off.

Seriously, you're liable to get arrested at 28-years old doing something "abnormal" like that.  As a kid its more or less tolerable (or was, who knows with the pigs these days), but not as an adult.  Especially if you're colored.

[MachineGhost]

This is why people who profess to hate density have a great time vacationing in places that have higher density figures and lower car usage then where they live. The American phenomenon of people fleeing the city for suburbs barely happens in Europe, because they have properly-designed cities for the most part that don't feel oppressive and dangerous.

You may actually be right about this.  I'll have to dwell on it.

[MachineGhost]

But there are many real, actual examples of very dense cities there you don't need a car but the place doesn't feel like a cramped shithole (I know the feeling; truly I do). Some that I am personally familiar with are Lisbon, Paris, Jerusalem, and Brussels. I have colleagues in Tokyo who love it for similar reasons (none of them own cars there). Even the NYC metro area counts. I successfully lived there for four years with no car and used the subway and train systems extensively, even though I found it unpleasant for other reasons. I know that you grew up in NYC so I think we're both on the same page about why one might want to leave that environment. It drove me to the suburbs.

Let's elucidate on why NYC is not an appropriate substitute for the European cities you've listed.  What does NYC do wrong?

It's really too bad Portland is in the tsunami inundation zone because its the most European-like city that we supposedly have.  I think the odds of finding a city like that in the less dense West or Midwest is a needle in a haystack.  But I haven't formally started my search yet.  I got a stack of "Where To Retire" magazines to get through for ideas.

[Kriegsspiel]

Sprawl and back-to-the-land fantasies are just the natural result of cars. They cannot be fought without acknowledging the root of the problem: cars.

Yes, that certainly is the annoying dichotomy about it.  My fear is that self-driving cars are actually going to allow people to do the back-to-the-land fantasy and then it will no longer be a dream.  So the window is closing shut unless the Human Zoo mantains its vise-like grip and appeal.

People who want to live rurally on a "farm" could consider going back to horses and buggies, like the Amish. Eric Brende thought that horses were a better form of transportation in his book Better Off, where he lives in an Amish-like community he called the Minimites. Here is a quote:

Going without cars was not merely one example of minimation. It was perhaps the premiere example, the choice on which the others in some way depended. The slow pace and limited travel sphere of the Minimites was integral to their whole way of life. It was the precondition of neighborly stability, mutual aid, and everyday face-to-face interaction. Being car-free also made them more carefree, financially speaking, more solvent.

...

... as a form of travel, the horse was not universally appropriate. For farmers, or others living in rural areas, the horse made sense. Besides shrinking the distance among farms, a work animal provided manure for the fields and power for the implements. But city dwellers might view their situation differently. For them, the human leg makes sense as a primary mode of propulsion

So jafs, out there in his Private Shire, could fence in his yard and get rid of the lawn mower, hook up a harness and plow for serious farming, have a constant supply of manure for a garden, and if he gets a female horse, have a form of transportation that makes its own replacement.

[jafs]

I live in a college town, and am quite content here.  It's a good mix of people/space/nature for us.

This forum seems to breed extremism, or attract people who are already extreme, or a combination of the two.

[Kriegsspiel]

Oh, disregard then, I thought I'd read you say you lived in a rural area. I'm also a fan of college towns.

[Kriegsspiel]

Anyways, here's another bit I just came across a few minutes ago. I think you and PS could would both have reason to hope he's right.

[quote=The Zero Marginal Cost Society by Rifkin]3D printing is both local and global; it is also highly mobile, allowing infofacturers to be anywhere and quickly move to where ever there is an internet of things infrastructure to connect to. More and more prosumers will make and use simple products at home. Small- and medium-sized 3D businesses, infofacturing more sophisticated products, will likely cluster in local technology parks to establish an optimum lateral scale. Homes and workplaces will no longer be separated by lengthy commutes. It is even conceivable that today's overcrowded road systems will be less traveled and that the expense of building new roads will diminish as workers become owners and consumers become producers. Smaller urban centers of 150,000 to 250,000 people, surrounded by a rewilding of green space, might slowly replace dense urban cores and suburban sprawl in a more distributed and collaborative economic era.[/quote]

[Pointedstick]

Let's elucidate on why NYC is not an appropriate substitute for the European cities you've listed.  What does NYC do wrong?

There are quite a few things that I can think of, based on my experience (in no particular order):
- Extremely large, wide streets with no buffer from the sidewalks; you feel too close to traffic all the time, and there seems to be a constant cold-war fight between motorists and pedestrians that is mentally exhausting
- Ruled by haughty elitist liberals with no effective political competition; one-party domination means lots of corruption and people can and do get fleeced
- Mentally disturbed homeless people all over the place
- Criminal underclass in the area or nearby, depending on where you are
- Lack of cohesive shared culture; feels at times like a loose collection of ethnic/tribal enclaves (because it kind of is; check out the NYC metro area in http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/index.html)
- Subway system, though effective, is depressing and inspires shame, not pride; Brutalist, Soviet-style architecture and design and ancient technology
- Not enough small parks
- Many building facades have nothing interesting at street level; seems barren and forbidding
- Extreme zoning means too much separation between residential and commercial areas; you can't easily walk to enough corner stores, grocery shops, etc
- Terrible public schools; side-effect of political corruption, the criminal underclass, and tribal segregation interacting poorly with the "local schools" culture of the USA

[jafs]

I haven't been back in a little while, but I remember a lot of mixed residential/small shops and the like.

That's one of the things I liked about NY.

[MachineGhost]

I live in a college town, and am quite content here.  It's a good mix of people/space/nature for us.

This forum seems to breed extremism, or attract people who are already extreme, or a combination of the two.

Where are you exactly?  I'll add it to my list.  I have a few places on it so far, mostly where its actually possible to live on the average SS check alone and nothing else.  Yes, thats actually possible...  I'm surprised.

[MachineGhost]

- Lack of cohesive shared culture; feels at times like a loose collection of ethnic/tribal enclaves (because it kind of is; check out the NYC metro area in http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/index.html)

Wow, that map is really eye opening, especially in SoCal.  It seems like the colored really don't venture out and group together out of the metro areas.

[jafs]

I live in a college town, and am quite content here.  It's a good mix of people/space/nature for us.

This forum seems to breed extremism, or attract people who are already extreme, or a combination of the two.

Where are you exactly?  I'll add it to my list.  I have a few places on it so far, mostly where its actually possible to live on the average SS check alone and nothing else.  Yes, thats actually possible...  I'm surprised.

Sorry, I tend not to share that sort of information online.

But, there are lots of nice college towns across the country.

I'm not sure that you can live on them on an average SS check, though - costs of living tend to be higher than non-college towns.